Tales of Vesperia - Finished

I've just managed to complete my first goal; finishing Tales of Vesperia.

The story:

It start's out quite normal. You're a guy living in the Lower Quarter of a city, but unfortunately the Aqua Blastia that's supposed to keep the fountain running and thus, provide the Lower Quarter with water, got stolen.

Your goal is to repair the fountain by getting the blastia back.

But, somehow along the way it gets much, much more complicated and you end up saving the whole world.

Blastia's are quite important: They're stones with magic-like properties that keep stuff running. For example, aqua blastia affect water and bodhi blastia are used to fight with: They are needed to use Artes.

I really enjoyed the story. As most Tales of.. games it starts out pretty straight forward but keeps on getting more complicated along the way and once you think you're almost done, it manages to add even more depth.

The characters are pretty likeable too. As with all the Tales of.. games, you get to know more random stuff about the characters by watching so-called 'sketches', basically optional conversations/jokes the characters have with eachother.

They are quite fun, but also provide a lot of background knowledge.

Gameplay

It's pretty similar to most Tales games. You run around on a HUGE world map with monsters that you can either fight or try to avoid.

You can enter cities/caves and stuff on the map by pressing A.

Later in the game it gets easier to travel along the map due to being able to fly instead of walk.

The fighting system is also similar to most Tales of.. Games. The battles pop up in a new arenalike screen and the fighting is in real time. 

You can have 4 party members on the field but you're only able to really control 1. The others behaviour depends on the strategy you've set.

Difficulty:

As with most Tales of.. games you can switch the difficulty between easy - medium - hard whenever the heck you want, for example if you get frustrated being stuck on a boss or if you just want to run around enjoying the story while being tired of all the random battles.

Cooking/crafting

There's also a cooking system in place: You can learn recipes along the way and cook dishes after battle to temporarily gain stats, restore HP or TP.

I barely used it, mainly because I just wanted to finish the story and couln't be bothere to get into it... 

Same with the crafting (Synthesizing) system: It's forever since I completed the tutorial and simply didn't remember how it worked and well, seeing I got along fine with the stuff I found on the way I just skipped it... But then again, I rarely bother with crafting/cooking in other games than MMORPGs,

All in all, I loved this game, and am glad I got through the story in about 41 hours.